SLC Times

American Library Association  issued the following announcement on March 11.

Jeanie Austin will deliver the 2022 Augusta Baker Lecture on April 22 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern. Registration for this virtual event is free. Austin’s talk will draw from their new ALA Neal-Schuman book “Library Services and Incarceration: Recognizing Barriers, Strengthening Access,” which focuses on restorative justice and advocates for rethinking the intersections between librarianship and carceral systems.

Part of a Children, Libraries and Literacy Initiative of USC’s School of Library and Information Science, the annual lecture series honors Augusta Braxton Baker (1911-1998), a beloved children’s librarian and storyteller who made South Carolina her home after a 37-year career at the New York Public Library. The first African American Coordinator of Children’s Services within the NY Public Library system, she worked tirelessly throughout her career to diversify the genre of children’s literature and to make books for children and young adults more reflective of the young people who read them. Dr. Baker served as USC’s storyteller-in-residence for 14 years from 1980 to 1994. The current Augusta Baker Endowed Chair is Dr. Nicole Cooke, who teaches several SLIS courses, including Diversity in Libraries, Critical Cultural Information Studies, and Storytelling for Social Justice and Advocacy, and hosts many webinars that feature a stellar lineup of librarians, archivists, and information professionals who work with diverse and otherwise marginalized populations.

Austin earned their PhD in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are a jail and reentry services librarian at the San Francisco Public Library. They have provided library services in juvenile detention centers and jails, and researched library services in carceral facilities, for over a decade. Their work has been published in First Monday, International Journal of Information, Diversity & Inclusion (IJIDI), Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Libraries: Culture, History, and Society, and The Reference Librarian, among other venues.

ALA Editions | ALA Neal-Schuman publishes resources used by library and information professionals, scholars, students, and educators to improve programs and services, build on best practices, enhance pedagogy, share research, develop leadership, and promote advocacy. ALA authors and developers are leaders in their fields, and their content is published in a variety of print and electronic formats. Contact ALA Editions | ALA Neal-Schuman at editionsmarketing@ala.org.

Original source can be found here.